Christ, he thinks, by my age I ought to know. You don’t get on by being original.

You
don’t get on by being bright. You don’t get on by being strong. You get on by being a
subtle crook; somehow he thinks that’s what Norris is, and he feels an irrational dislike
taking root, and he tries to dismiss it, because he prefers his dislikes rational, but after all,
these circumstances are extreme, the cardinal in the mud, the humiliating tussle to get
him back in the saddle, the talking, talking on the barge, and worse, the talking, talking
on his knees, as if Wolsey’s unravelling, in a great unweaving of scarlet thread that might
lead you back into a scarlet labyrinth, with a dying monster at its heart.

Hilary Mantel
Wolf Hall
Tags: 16th century, English, historical fiction

August 2, 2015

But just as I didn’t want to resent my kids, I also didn’t want to find myself too much in
love with them. There are parents who don’t like to hear their little girl crying at night, at
the vast approaching dark of sleep, and so in their torment think why not feed her a
lollipop, and a few years later that kid’s got seven cavities and a pulled tooth. This is how
we’ve arrived at the point where we give every kid on the team a trophy in the name of
participation. I didn’t want to love my kids so much that I was blind to their
shortcomings, limitations, and mediocre personalities, not to mention character flaws and
criminal leanings. But I could, I thought, I could love a kid that much. A kid really could
be everything, and that scared me. Because once a kid is everything, not only might you
lose all perspective and start proudly displaying his particIn the hospital men’s room, as
I’m washing my hands, I glance in the mirror. The man I see is not so much me as my
father. When did he show up? There is no soap; I rub hand sanitizer into my face–it
burns. I nearly drown myself in the sink trying to rinse it off.

My face is dripping, my shirt is wet, and the paper-towel dispenser is empty. Waiting to
dry, I carve Jane’s name into the cinder-block wall with the car key.

A hospital worker almost catches me, but I head him off with a confrontation: “Why no
paper towels?”

“We don’t use them anymore–sustainability.”

“But my face is wet.”

“Try toilet paper.”

I do–and it catches in the stubble of unshaven beard and I look like I’ve been out in a
toilet-paper snowstorm.

A.M. Homes
May We Be Forgiven
June 27, 2015

Everything failed to subdue me. Soon everything seemed dull: another sunrise, the lives
of heroes, failing love, war, the discoveries people made about each other. The only thing
that didn’t bore me, obviously enough, was how much money Tim Price made, and yet in
its obviousness it did. There wasn’t a clear, identifiable emotion within me, except for
greed and possibly, total disgust. I had all the characteristics of a human being–flesh,
blood, skin, hair–but my depersonalization was so intense, had gone so deep, that the
normal ability to feel compassion had been eradicated, the victim of a slow, purposeful
erasure. I was simply imitating reality, a rough resemblance of a human being, with only
a dim corner of my mind functioning. Something horrible was happening and yet I
couldn’t figure out why–couldn’t put my finger on it. The only thing that calmed me was
the satisfying sound of ice being dropped into a glass of J&B. Eventually I drowned the
chow, which Evelyn didn’t miss; she didn’t even notice its absence, not even when I
threw it in the walk-in freezer, wrapped in one of her sweaters from Bergdorf Goodman.
We had to leave the Hamptons because I would find myself standing over our bed in the
hours before dawn, with an ice pick gripped in my fist, waiting for Evelyn to open her
eyes. At my suggestion, one morning over breakfast, she agreed, and on the last Sunday
before Labor Day we returned to Manhattan by helicopter.

ipation trophies, you might also fear for that kid’s life every time he leaves your sight. I
didn’t want to live in perpetual fear. People don’t recover from the death of a child. I
knew I wouldn’t. I knew that having a kid would be my chance to improve upon my
shitty childhood, that it would be a repudiation of my dad’s suicide and a celebration of
life, but if that kid taught me how to love him, how to love, period, and then I lost him as
I lost my dad, that would be it for me. I’d toss in the towel. Fuck it, fuck this world and
all its heartbreak. I’d tell that to Connie, and she’d tell me that if that was how I felt I was
already a slave to the fear, and good luck.